5 Ways Public Schools Prepare Us For Prison Life

It didn’t occur to me that the six-foot fence around the perimeter was meant to keep me in. That is, until the day I decided to leave.

Fed up with being kicked around the schoolyard, I decided to do what any intelligent human being would do: go home. I soon learned this wasn’t a viable option for a sixth grader.

Looking back, it’s not real clear who was surprised the most by the situation — the school authorities at my assumption that I would actually leave, or me, at the revelation I had no choice in the matter. Apparently there were laws. Huh, who knew?

The view of the playground fence from the jungle gym was never quite the same.

****

Parents strive to prepare their children for school. We teach them to recite the alphabet, to count, and learn their colors. Is that preparation really enough to survive the next twelve years of compulsory education?

In spite of its intended purpose, after you boil away the Friday-night lights, dances, and hook-ups, all you have left is a state-run institution, excreting the same social sludge as its cousin the prison system.

When you stop and think about how similar they are, you have to wonder: is the system designed to ready children for society, or to provide the mental skills for prison life?

What did you learn in the locker room shower?

Mandatory gym showers usually begin around 7th grade. The time in human development when boys and girls have no self-awareness or inhibitions — no wait, that’s a toddler.

Can you think of a better way to teach herd behavior than to strip naked an entire class of adolescents and corral them into open shower stalls? Sweat is not the only thing washed down those drains.

However, it is a good way to prepare kids for the other lessons you’ll need for prison life.

I read the article and it reminded me counter-culture hero Frederick Weisman’s film on school as prison from the 1960s. It is true that very wealthy people send their children to very expensive prep schools, and would not dream of polluting their young with hoi polloi. But even with substandard buildings and dopey rules, individual teachers can do wonders with young minds. Standing in the way are teachers unions and a liberal offensive against school choice. Romney has just come out with his support for vouchers, which should help break the monopoly. I recommend that PJM readers follow the startling success of Eva Moskowitz’s SuccessCharterSchools in Harlem. I mentioned her here: http://clarespark.com/2011/08/31/review-steven-brills-class-warfare/ and elsewhere on my website.

Oh please! Stop with the “vouchers” nonsense! It’s such a pseudo-conservative, RINO bunch of nonsense. It is still the federal government funding what it has no business being involved in at all. What ever happened to the real conservative position of getting rid of the Department of “Education” altogether? Compromised away. By RINOs. Give me a break. Give it time and every institution stupid enough to take vouchers (which will be virtually all of them) will be thoroughly infected with all the same crap. The liberals will insist on it. And the RINOs will cave as always. Read this twice: IF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FUNDS IT, THEN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT GETS TO WRITE ALL THE RULES: PERIOD. Get it?

I would go much further – a Constitutional amendment to the effect that no governmental body at ANY level shall have anything to do with education, whether regulating it, funding it, certifying it, or anything else, other than to enforce the same laws upon students and teachers that are enforced upon all other citizens of the Republic.

The sole exception would be to permit federal and state governments to run service academies and other training programs for military personnel.

Amen to that. In fact a Constitutional amendment shouldn’t be necessary. The federal government was never given the power to fund educational institutions or dictate how they should be run therefore, it does not have that power. But as the situation now stands it appears that we need a whole bevy of amendments telling SCOTUS in plain, modern language even they can understand exactly what we DON’T want the federal government doing. What we really need, though, is originalists in the House, Senate and Oval Office. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about an out-of-control SCOTUS.

Apparently you never got to experience military communism (army, Marine Corp) and the draft? At least mandatory public grade school and high school PT, at least in the 60s when there were no fat teenagers and fattening PCs (computers), got you ready for basic training and that Vietnam Village booby trap course. I don’t recall slide rules and McDonald’s making us little people obese, unless the person was a natural fatty, like the Meathead in “All in the Family.” I can’t imagine the Meathead making it through gas (chemical agent) training under fire (or a year in state prison for that matter). Curious how the current baby boomers are all for a single payer health care system but avoided that single payer military health care system like the plague in the 60s. That was before the military was a volunteer, don’t ask don’t tell, affirmative action program providing safe military occupational specialties with no guaranteed enemy contact and a re-enlistment bonus. From what I gather they even have battalion level EEOC programs today (which apparently doesn’t apply to equal dying for equal pay between genders), but I suppose there will be mandatory collective bargaining in the ranks at some point. It’s a hell of a war when only a few males have to die. I don’t know what they think they’re going to do when they really have to draft to replace mass casualties and not enough straights show up to serve with the Corporal Klingers and the other switch hitters.

Yawn, as a teacher in a low performing public high school, I noticed this ages ago. Two big differences: prisons have barbed wire at the top of their chain-link fence, public high schools have bleachers by their football fields.

That low performing high school failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress 5 years in a row. Instead of firing people, they changed their bell schedule, making some classes longer and others shorter. Viola, a new 5 years to mess students up.

don
In the IV century BCE the Theban Scred Band, 300 matched homosexual lovers fought against Pilip II and died to the last man. Since our likely opponents do not believe in the Genevia Conventions and despies homosexuals, other then themselves,they will be greatly motivated to perform and will either do so or die. Reality is a soverign cure for PC.

Someone with your command of spelling and grammar has no place on a page discussing the concept of schooling.

Unless, of course, you’re being held hostage; you’ve been beaten over the head, electro-shocked, starved and water-boarded; now left alone, you’ve managed to knock the keyboard onto the floor and you’re typing with your foot. In that case, you are Jack Bauer and Captain Kirk rolled into one, and you have my utmost admiration.

Yeah, I know, but the Greeks didn’t do too well with those sexist uptight brutal Romans, did they? I mean, for what, eight hundred years, it wasn’t called the Roman Empire for nothing. Thinking about it further, I’m not sure the current American private prep school metro sexual elite in charge–Obama, Dukakis et al.,– have performed all that well when compared to the average public school eighth grade level educated draftee that made up the majority of the American military of the “Greatest Generation.” At least those unthinking undereducated dodge ball playing automatons doing the dirty work won their war while whoring their way through Europe.

Yeah, I noticed that when I was just starting to do my time: school is not thought of as an opportunity to learn, it’s a 12 year prison sentence for the crime of being a kid.

Not that I want to have to live with a bunch of ignorant twits, I just don’t find ignorant twits to be any more tolerable when it’s over than they were before serving their sentence. What they manage to do is screw up life for those who really want to learn something.

In the late 1970′s I went to a high school that was “open campus”. This meant that we students left school at will through the day, usually for lunch, which was at fast food restaurants in the area of the school. In the senior year, many students left at mid day to go to work at jobs.

We also had both a trap and rifle team. Yes, we brought our weapons to school. They were checked into the Principals office in the morning. We had to walk down the street to a community range and on occasion, we had to ride district buses to compete against other high schools.

With our weapons. High School kids, walking down suburban streets, with shotguns and no one batted an eye.

Not one time was there so much as single event where a kid did anything improper with a weapon. Hunters safety classes were taught every month, on the first Saturday. On Campus. With school and district support.

We had lockers. Little places to call our own, to keep our stuff, so we didnt have to drag our crap around on our back all day. Yes, it was well known that they were harbors of contraband substances.( mine contraband was National Lampoon Magazines, which I rented out for a reasonable rate to other students and a surprisingly large number of teachers ) Lockers were considered ours and not the schools. We policed ourselves. We knew the inspection schedule and we respected it. Your parents got involved long before the law got involved with any issues found within by the school.

We had PE all four years. We all dressed down, we all showered. Unless you had a deferment from a doctor, you were in PE at some point in the day. I dont remember any kids that were fat. Husky? yes. Fat? no.

Before you had a car, you rode a bike to school. No one had their parents drop them off or pick them up unless their was some sort of death in the family. You had your older friends with cars take you. No one could survive the shame of being dropped off by their mom in front of the high school.

We ate food in a cafeteria that was run by the students. The primary menu item? Pizza. Pepperoni Pizza. In second place, Cheeseburgers with fries.
We also had a Coke fountain like you would at any fast food restaurant. We also made a profit on daily operations. The cafeteria was open after school and during all school functions. The profit from the cafeteria funded many school functions for students. We had one adult to oversee operations of the cafeteria. Everything else was run by us, for us. To my knowledge, no food items using “soy” was ever served in the cafeteria.

Most of the people of my generation had a drivers license at 16, a job that paid taxes the same year, and within short order afterwards, a car. Not a nice car, certainly not a new car, but a car. We drove it to school. They usually ran on unleaded gas. More than a few were ford pintos with firestone 500′s.

When you turned 18 and you graduated from high school, you left home. You might have had 4 other roommates, but you didnt stay at your parents house one moment longer than you had to. It was considered shameful in that generation to live with your parents except under the most extreme situations.

Our school encouraged students of all levels to take vocational training. I was a math/science student, but I took 2 years of metal and woodshop. I sucked at it, but those two classes continue to this day to help me in my daily life. Everyone should know how to swing a hammer if for no other reason than to appreciate the effort of those who make their living doing exactly that.

Many of us also took “Regional Occupation” classes where you worked as an intern in a real job out in the field. My best friend went into the ROP program to work at Pacific Bell. She went on to work there there the day after high school after working in ROP for the last two years of high school. She recently retired from the company after 30 years. I worked for the local electrical utility in a field that was then known as “Data Processing”. I still work in that industry today. I learned to go to work, to talk to adults, to dress appropriate and I learned what I did and did not like.

My kids have just finished high school. None of these things exist in high schools today. When I asked about ROP for my kids, I was told that they try to reserve those positions for kids that are “at risk” that it wasnt appropriate for kids that were going to go to college. fewer than 25% of the kids my kids went to school with have a drivers license at 18. Fewer have ever worked a job, even a summer job. Fewer had any expectation of leaving home after turning 18 and graduating high school. Many kids remain children well into their 20′s, when my generation was well into careers and having kids of their own.

The word “Lockdown” was never used in my high school. nor were the words “teacher training day”. In my kids high schools, they are used every week. Kids are sent home for having pictures of guns on T-shirts. Campus is decidedly “closed”.

We weren’t raised to be victims. We were raised to be citizens. The school was an aide to enable that in our lives. Today’s kids are treated as criminals from the day they step into the system. Its no wonder they respond the way the do to society.

Oh and one other thing. There was no such thing as Ritalin in the 1970′s.

I graduated from high school five years ago. I was offered the chance to have a locker, but frankly having one made no sense considering classes were all over the place (the locker could be in one building and class a half-mile away). I did learn to be able to run half a mile with a fully loaded backpack in four minutes, though. I went into high school with the goal of graduating first in my class (I did, in a 21-way tie out of over 800), and passing enough AP exams to test out of a year of college (I did-41 credits). We still had student-run fundraisers that sold food, and the cafeteria still sold pizza and burgers daily (most people hated the cafeteria food, but it was there). It was against the rules, but common practice, to go across the street to Burger King to get better and healthier food than what the cafeteria had.

Boy, Frank, this brings back memories! My high school was one of those “open” concept buildings too. Everyone had a job after school and they drove to it with their parents’ second car, or as we called it, “the car I’m allowed to use”.
I’m having trouble getting my son to even take the written test to get his learner’s permit. He always says he’s got too much going on this week, but next week….! He’s almost 16 and he’s in no hurry. I actually like it when he tells me, “I can’t wait to get out of this house!” Don’t get me wrong; I love my son, but I hope he means it.

I would like to add one little thing:
if you acted like an horse’s ass in school, the teacher could clobber you. And you didn’t go home and tattletail to your parents or they would clobber you for making the teacher clobber you. And you respected both the teacher and your parents years later for it. And you were a darn good citizen, with integrity and strong composition.

The biggest “clobberer” in my HS in San Antonio in the late ’60′s was the football coach. He was famous for being violent and abusive “but he was a winner”. He was later arrested for murdering his girlfriend’s parents to get the insurance money. He clobbered them with a steel pipe while they were asleep.

Ah, thanks for the stroll down memory lane.
The best part is when your kid tells you your era of music is far better than anything their generation has to offer.(and they enjoy the Floyd concert with you)

Like Frank Martin, I went to high school in the late ’70s. Way before that, as a little kid, my parents and grandparents sparked my interest in history by taking me to historic sites such as Gettysburg and Valley Forge, and by exposing me to lots of good books, and magazines such as American Heritage and National Geographic.

In my high school though, left-wing ideology had already started to ruin subjects such as history, english and “health.” Some of our so-called history textbooks emphasized identity politics much more than true history, so that we would spend more time learning about Cesar Chavez, Margaret Sanger or Phyllis Wheatley than about George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. I didn’t always have my head in a book, but I still knew more than my teachers who had recently gotten their degrees in Student Activism.

Before I got to high school, though, I had also learned my lesson about not being that kid who raised his hand and said “Oooooooo, I know the answer.” In my middle school, roving packs of black kids would target any smaller white, asian or black kid who showed that they were smart, and the smart kids would frequently be beaten up without any repercussions. This kind of anti-intellectualism seems to have only gotten worse in black culture since LBJ’s Great Society programs solidified.

Some of my high school classes were basically run by unruly students, especially when the teacher was a recent college graduate who had lots of new “classroom management ideas” and who wanted to be liked, or when it was an older teacher who wanted to be “hip.” I was no angel in school, and adolescence can be hard for kids in the best circumstances, but this kind of setting was really hellish for kids who did want to learn. I shudder to think how it is for those kids today who are stuck in public schools which are ruled by the ideas of the educational establishment. How ironic that the members of that powerful establishment see themselves as non-conformists!

From what I gather, these kinds of problems have steadily gotten worse in many schools, whether they have become like prisons or not. We won’t be able to set this country back on its proper course until we destroy the influence of the teacher’s unions, the college education faculties, and the education bureacracies, and until more parents are willing to be responsible for how kids learn. What has happened in Wisconsin and New Jersey shows that there is a very tough fight ahead in order to do this, but the violent reaction shows that the union and education establishment is in fear of losing their big perks.

Egil, well said. I grew up in a pretty tough, rural area and was able to defend myself against the punks who preyed on anyone smarter than they were but I’d probably be expelled for doing so today. The lesson these days is apparently that you must be passive and wait for the administration (state) to help you. Self-sufficiency is not tolerated.

Also, like Frank, we had marksmanship training as part of our gym class curriculum in 7th and 8th grade and we could bring our own guns or they were provided. Most of us brouhgt our own. Firearms safety was a major component of the instruction and there was never any incident of violence involving guns. Since I lived in “the sticks”, I rode a bus to school before I could drive. Imagine 25-30 adolescents piling off a school bus carrying .22 caliber rifles today. They would probably be surrounded by Janet Napolitano and a DHS SWAT team.

The bottom line is that ‘liberalism’ has slowly and effectively taken over public education and it has become the root of the poison tree for American society. Teaching is no longer the respected profession it once was. In the past, a teacher was a master of their particular specialty, be it math or history, etc. and that qualified them to teach it to someone else. A math teacher was, first and foremost, a mathematician and a good one.

Today, teachers are often less knowledgeable about their subject than some of their students. They go to teachers college to learn how to be teachers. Their degrees are often in “education” rather than physics or chemistry, for example. That seems to attract the more left-leaning, socially conscious among us. Then they get their union membership card and it’s downhill from there. There are exceptions, of course, but many are little more than civil servants doing their time and waiting for pensions.

I don’t know all the answers but I do know that more conservative thinkers need to enter the teaching profession. How to make that happen is the tough part.

Yes, this is a big part of the problem, I think. These college “education” programs do not encourage budding teachers to appreciate scholarship and deep learning, to put it mildly. And as you suggested, Ill Eagle, a lot of the kids who go into teaching now are those who “want to save the world,” as is the case with so many journalism students. That’s a recipe for disaster when youthful idealists who haven’t seen much of the world are indoctrinated into the educational establishment herd. And while there are some smart college kids who go into teaching, I’ve noticed that a lot of the ones who major in education were failures in other majors.

Teachers who major in education are worthless for the most part. I saw a study that said a bachelor’s degree in business was a bigger accomplishment than a doctorate in education. I know a man who had a doctorate in education who is functionally illiterate. He can read words but had no idea what the concept is in the material he is reading. This is the source of the teacher in Arkansas who was teaching regarding World War Eleven.

“Mandatory gym showers usually begin around 7th grade. The time in human development when boys and girls have no self-awareness or inhibitions — no wait, that’s a toddler.

Can you think of a better way to teach herd behavior than to strip naked an entire class of adolescents and corral them into open shower stalls? Sweat is not the only thing washed down those drains.”

I have always wondered about this. If anyone other than a gym teacher did this, they would be put in jail. High school gym implanted in me a distinct distaste for physical activity. Fortunately, I overcame that and went on to bicycle riding, cardio training, weight training and martial arts. And of all the gyms I’ve ever joined, not one of them ever had group showers.

Fortunately through out high school I had a medical exemption. I had broken my femur and it found I had cyst on my bone. Actually my doctor wasn’t so worried about me playing sports. He worried that a skinny kid like me wasn’t an athelete would singled out by the gym teacher and the other kids would rough me up where I really my break my femur again.

“Those can do, do. Those that can’t, teach. Those that can’t teach , teach gym”

I think most of you are missing the point. There is nothing normal about public schooling (But you could extend that concept to the extent of human life in this country). To define normal in this context; It is not normal to congregate hundreds of young persons in the confines and under the control of a single entity and then abdicate your parental influence… completely. Yes you may learn math (maybe) but you will learn herd behavior. The analogy to a prison is not a stretch.

Public schools are the leftist’s agent of change. It is pure socialism.

What sort of libertarian rubbish is this. Those things have nothing to do with the state, all the stuff described in this article happens at private schools, too, but hey at least they often have that 19th century building look to them.

All mandatory activities develop a certain similar flavor, namely that of coercion. All group conditions will lead to group dynamics demanding conformity, establishing hierarchies. In fact, teenagers are even more brutal to each other outside schools when there is no supervision or control. Just look at internet forums and social networks.

Hence the solution is that everyone should always do what they want and whenever they want, and never form any group with other people, in fact, stay away from them, be a hermit. Oh wait, that’s literally never happened. Even in the fricking Stone Age, our ancestors formed bands, eventually tribes.

Juxtaposing the state with family is pretty funny in that regard since tight-knit families can impose a sort of tyranny on their members that would make a Soviet secret police chief jealous.

Are schools overly cautious because of fear of lawsuits? Yes. Are schools too administratively rigid? Absolutely. Is that the reason why there are bullies, cliques and other unpleasant interactions, not at all. That’s just people being people. You need to be a liberal or just another Rousseau-inspired fool to believe otherwise.

“Is that the reason why there are bullies, cliques and other unpleasant interactions, not at all. That’s just people being people.”

Disagree. Bullies, cliques and other unpleasant interactions are due to having a group of people forced into close proximity who are not engaged in activities they find contributing to society or engaging. Engage their minds in something more than rote learning or time-serving activity and you have less of those unpleasant interactions. You find similar behavior in bureaucracies that end up with muddled missions.

“Another powerful influence contributes to the same end. The schools educate automatically. They train the absorbing powers of the brain, but fail to cultivate the faculties of assimilation and re-creation, and neglect almost wholly to develop the power of expression. “

Most people don’t give a damn if they contribute to society or engage in useful activity. And as I said people put in close proximity to each other is a fact of life as is the reality that those people may not like each other. You have neighbors, you have co-workers, you have family members. It’s a pure rolling of the dice if you get along with them all or not.

Just yesterday, I passed an elementary school that was close on a country road that had picked up in traffic. It looked just like a minimum security prison. I actually looked at the, looked like 10′ but probably just 6′, fence encircling it. The only difference from prison, the barbed wire on the top was leaning out rather than in.

As a retired teacher I love to reminisce over the 20 years I put in teaching. I taught at an inner city school which means that you could count the number of white students in the school on one had. We had three-thousand students plus rotating on a year round schedule. Most classes had over thirty students, some went as high as forty-five. Once the school bell sounded you were on your own. You and your class of inner city youth. I have to say for the most part there were some decent kids in my classes, that’s for the most part.

Teaching is a course in survival. Any weakness shown by a teacher signals the pack or class that it is time for a blood letting, that is your blood. As a result you ruled your class with tactics of intimidation/entertainment/wit and oh yes you got to actually teach. Yes that does happen. What is interesting is to try to intimidate a kid who is bigger than you and probably could beat about five of you up in a fight. Yet you look for the weakness and go for it. If you do it right, it alone has entertainment value which the class relishes to watch. It can be down right fun.

Then there are the others in your classes. I knew two kids who were murderers and I have to say for the most part I liked them both. I remember SWAT, complete with a helicopter, coming to my school to “arrest” one of these two boys. Alas, they let him go. He didn’t commit that murder. Then there were the drug dealers. I never did like them and had little to do with them. The worst were the clowns who thought school was just for mouthing off. They gave you no peace and consequently were always my top target. I loved teaching, when one of these clowns would start, I always got even. I learned how to take them apart with just a few words embarrassing the hell out of them. Inevitably one would challenge you, “Your mama…… blah, blah, blah!” That was my signal. I would look horrified and start my counter measure. My lines went something like this… I would never talk that way about your mother, honest I really loved her. I know that my shock you son, but it is true. I really loved her. By the way no matter what anyone says, I’m not your father, really honest! By the way when you get home tell mom that your out of milk. By this time I would have the clown squirming in his seat and begging for me to stop. Now I could start teaching totally uninterrupted. My classes were usually full, kids couldn’t wait to see me go into one of my routines and destroy some loud mouth.

I still meet some of my old students here and there. They always remember my razor wit and how much they loved my class. They might not have learned anything, but they loved my class.

Our eldest, at 11, has never been to school. Our younger son spent four weeks learning to line up at kindergarten. And we live in a leafy suburb in Canada with one of the very best public school systems in the Province.

There are a variety of reasons to homeschool but one of the most essential is that even an excellent industrial school system does, as Gore Vidal said of television writing, well what should not be done at all.

At the moment my 11 year old, having built me a soil screen with overlapped joints, is agitating for a drill press for his workshop. He tucked in tonight reading “Fine Woodworking” because he’d finished the last Bill Bryson book in the house.

My 8 year old, fell asleep being read to by his mother. He’d been drawing and writing over the day. Shooting up some zombies, watching ET and, for a while, throwing “the old Pigskin” around with Dad. A shower was not required.

Unfortunately, most of the boys’ friends were back in school after the Canadian long weekend and, for most of them, school runs to three and then there are the “activities” which preclude hanging around with the kids down the street.

I want my young children to be able to read well, write fluently, be confortable with numbers, be forthright with their friends and the adults they meet, know that global warming is a crock and be unashamed of saying so (always backing it with evidence(and knowing what evidence is)), capable of standing their ground, running an argument, testing a hypothesis, devising an experiment, planning a weekend camping trip, sailing a dinghy, knowing how to say “no”, swearing when they need to, throwing a spiral, telling a joke, getting the English Civil War, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the American Civil War, the Opium Wars, the Boer War, the Boxer Rebellion, WWI, WWII and Korea in a line and explaining what each was about, know F=ma, their times tables, who Charles Dickens was and two of his novels, and to be able to tell a good story.

A very good school might, with luck and a tailwind, get half that job done; we are pretty close to finished if we could just get that damned spelling thing a little closer to perfect.

The real problem is that all teachers are gay Communist atheist Satanists, out to corrupt the youth of today. Every public school is exactly like the worst school you can dream up, plus 25% more gay Communism, goat sacrifice, and blood orgies. I should know, I am one. HAIL SATAN, HAIL LENIN, HAIL COCO CHANEL!

On a non-sarcastic note, if you want to fix schools here are a couple of steps:

1) Fix the kids. Beat them more often, hug them more often.
2) Fix the parents. Hold them responsible for their student’s behavior.
3) Ditch the “Education degree”, and only hire teachers who have a BA or better in their subject area.

Absolutely. Used to be a teacher had a degree in the field they wanted to teach. Now an ‘education degree’ is all that is needed. Dr. Walter Williams noticed that the ‘School of Education ‘ was were people who failed out of business school, engineering, etc. settled in order to continue attending and receive a degree. Is it no wonder public schools are geared to the least, instead of encouraging excellence. Of course, I had some really good teachers in my public schooling. But they weren’t nearly plentiful enough. I understand that one has to REALLY LOVE teaching to endure all the dangers from students and bureaucratic mismanagement.

I HATED HS, it was geared to the dumbest kid in the class. And it was not that way in Fairfax County, Virginia(underclassmen), only in Texas (upperclassmen). But, there were still teachers in TX that were outstanding. I, however, was lucky and managed to get into a ‘gifted and talented’ program run by a couple of grad students or doctoral candidates from a local state funded major university. It was awesome, but way over my head. But still more fun and interesting than listening to the drone from thoroughly disillusioned/apathetic people who could not do, so they taught. Still don’t know if I am gifted, talented or both.

If I ever have children they will not spend a minute in a government run institution for their education.

Many of us reading this essay today, Ms. Robinson, wish we could share in your amusement at the parallelogram you have drawn containing both public schools and prisons. While the essay is humorous, the reality it illuminates is anything but. Nobody Important has two children in elementary “prison” two blocks away as I type this Comment and I see the parallels you have illustrated every day.

But there are many more than merely five of them to illustrate. Rather than write them all out in essay form for PJM (as you have begun to do here), Nobody Important has concatenated them into catalog form (online) so that other people – like you, Ms. Robinson (who isn’t as critical of PJM as I am) – will be moved to write those essays for PJM (PJM have a hard enough time allowing my Comments – some of which they have refused to publish). The catalog of which I speak is located on Another Slow News Day’s blog in the Government Schools section.

That page, however, is just the beginning of ASND’s Government Schools catalog of horrors. Traversing the branches of ASND’s Education / Government Schools menu tree opens up numerous sub-topical branches with dozens of additional citations paralleling the parallels you painted for us today. Thank you for them. Nobody Important is glad he could return the favor.

“dominate or stay off the radar” – sums it up perfectly. The schools I attended have to be exactly what I’d imagine a prison yard to be: you know who to avoid, how to stay out of sight, and most of all, how to look longingly at the sweet freedom of the highway just over the hill.

To me, though, the worst part was not being able to learn what I wanted to be learning. I loved history and wanted to be reading the classics, but instead I was learning inane chemistry formulas that, to this day, don’t serve me at all (other that to know to go easy with the bleach when washing the white clothing…) That was the worst part: “You will learn this subject and pass with proficiency or you fail and can repeat it again…”

Several decades ago, when I was in high school, I was told by the unimaginative teaching staff that I was a a problem because I didn’t do “anything”. I was non-athletic, hated music lessons, somewhat shy (“backward” was the term used to describe my demeanor), wasn’t cool, dressed “funny”, etc. The reality was that what I did was not an “school approved” activity. My best friend and I bought a used Piper Cub (for $400 each derived from after school easrnings) that needed a new engine. With proper help we re-built it and then proceeded to learn to fly. We took girls for plane rides, landed in farm fields, flew over the city and small towns, and generally did something that very few kids to this day will ever experience. At the same time I had a friend that I admired for his mechanical skills. He built a beautiful street-rod in his dad’s garage. (Do any of you know what “chopped and channeled” means?). He was a nobody like me because he “didn’t do anything” either. Wasn’t an “approved school activity”. Once when the school paper was planning to write an article about interesting things that students were doing they interviewed me for the article. They never published the interview but instead dropped it for a story about some guy who was on the tennis team. When the senior yearbook came out the spaces below the rod-builder’s name and mine were mostly blank. We were non-conformists that didn’t do anything. “Different” kids who didn’t “fit in”. Thank the Lord that I escaped the “fit in” mentality that the mostly unimaginative school environments spawn. I have been blessed with an interesting life as a result. I never did see much in tennis.

Graduated Hastings High School, Hastings-on-Hudson NY 1981. Despite being in the suburbs of NYC, what is now a solidly Prius/NYTIMES/no fracking hood, was at that time home to the world’s largest wire factory, Anaconda Wire and Cable.
We also had GM in North Tarrytown, about 4 miles away. We had Otis Elevator about 4 miles in the other direction in Yonkers. My classmates were probably about 1/3 blue collar guys. Tough guys who fought. Another 1/3 were new comers, like me, kids of white collar workers and the other 1/3 were kids of small business owners and so forth. There were no Blacks, Hispanics, and only a few of us Jews. A teacher called me a “stupid Jew” and I punched him in the chest, and knocked the wind out of him. He apologized and never bugged me again. Many of my teachers had been in Vietnam. They were also tough. The girls all wore heels and makeup and perfume, so I really couldn’t think. We played tackle football most days. If you were trouble, like me, you got sent to a special gym class for football and you got sent to metal shop, to melt stuff. In my opinion, that kept me from jail or hard drugs…. Barely. I was able to pass all my courses while constantly cutting. I was bright. I lied and was driving a cab at 16, working in restaurants, and had money, big money, in my pockets from legitimate work. My Principal was a former USMC gold gloves champ. I distinctly remember him knocking out a speed freak to took a swing at him. If you actually beat the crap out of someone on school property, or hit a teacher, you got expelled. End of story. No special ed. And we did have weapons, but no one ever used one. We still had our fists and our feet. We dragged raced at lunch. We blew off fireworks, as this was 10 years before the little El Deuce Giuliani made the celebration of the 4th of July a jailable offense.
And yes, there was bullying, and blood, and showering, and date rape, and vomit, and fear and pain and bruising. And we all came out of it and moved on with our lives, having lived our childhoods and teen age years when were were supposed to have. It’s done. It’s over. I’m 49 and I have no tattoos, no Viagra, no regrets. I say leave the kids alone, and let the teachers teach their own ways, so long as they pass along the knowledge needed, like my teachers who were Vietnam vets did; like men.

Spent my summer in Marquette. I love the UP. My wife teaches and she’s an NRA member and far from what is usually described as a member of the elite. However, if you have a brain it takes years to get tenure, if you don’t quit first. I know many ex teachers.

This is the problem in the wealthy districts: The teachers answer to the administrators who answer to the superintendent who answers to the parents who answer to the kids. The parents seem to think because they have a nice house, their kids should go to a good school, even if they spend all their time doing whippits.

All of this of course shakes out in the job market, where employers do not have to be politically correct. Smart parents teach their kids that the real world and school are not at all connected. Most of the teachers who are not morons, are totally trapped by a system that does not reward their extra work. Everyone in education is trapped. Do you have any idea what would happen to a teacher who hit a kid back? How about an administrator who opposed tenure for a moron who was a friend of the principal? The big argument I have however with all the anti teacher people is that despite my teachers being overwhelmed and underpaid in the 70s, I did fine. Why? Well, let’s face it, I’m Jewish. Jewish people, Chinese people, and of course anyone who studies does fine despite the system. The system, however, at this point is set up solely to cater to the lowest common denominator.

The sad fact is there were always peasants and will always be. And they come in all colors. You cannot get blood from a stone or force a stone to learn.
We have no jobs for stones anymore. This blog, the Net, all our discussions will not change one thing. It’s still up to the individual child and that child’s family to get them to a place in life where they succeed. Schools are an adjunct to cultural learning. Hell, the schools told Einstein’s parents he was retarded and Elon Musk, who just launched the space X rocket quit grad school after 3 days.

School can be so frustrating to the highly gifted and motivated that it actually cramps their style. That’s why I say, the teachers need thr autonomy to teach correctly, and if a child is from a family of 40 ounce drinking fools, so be it. Sorry, but there are not enough jobs for all, and if you cannot raise your child without a TV and Ritalin, you had better have a business for them to inherit.

The infamous permanent record. Mom has dementia and has for her safety and well being been placed into assisted living. Local place and inside are two of my old teachers residing with her. I met my old kindergarten teacher and the first thing she says was, “I remember you, your the one who at five years old snuck into the barber shop and cut your own hair till the barber had to shave your head to repair the damage, the kids in our class made fun of you and you snuck out and ran away from kindergarten” I was stunned! That was about 1956! The permanent record is real!

The permanent record IS real.
Mine, first grade: “Keeps talking, will not shut up. Always clowning, trying to make the other kids laugh. Likes an audience.” (We had the stool in the front corner, me actually wearing a dunce cap with tape over my mouth. I never got to be the good fairy and wake the other kids up after lunch nap with the magic wand. Rats.)

This led to my first lesson in politics.
Teacher pointed to a picture and asked me if I knew who that man was.
Nooo, I didn’t.
“That is John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States.
And do you know what President Kennedy would like you to do?”
Nooo, I didn’t.
“John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States,
would like you, TO BE QUIET!!”

My former daughter in law is a teacher. She believes and teaches that grandparents are the problem, distance the grandparents and you erase all the old ways and all the bad stuff from the past, patriotism, family history conservative ways. Her view taught in schools for teachers is, Grandparents should only see their grandchildren on birthdays and holidays that have gift giving the kids receive their gifts which cannot be taken home and since the kids are never allowed to go see grandma and grandpa never get to play with.
The State has taken kids away from the grandparents and is trying very hard to nullify the parents. The ultimate goal I believe is to eventually take the kids away from parents and family to reeducate them to the accepted party line as preached by the liberal teachers who were indoctrinated at college by the same sad liberals who don’t teach kids to think but what to think.

If I didn’t no it was you Rhonda, I would think it was some pathetic 1960′s wacko rant. Yes, we don’t want 6th graders wandering the streets unsupervised and unprotected. I will give you 10,000 reasons why. Also, because your sex is exempt from life on the line to protect the nation you are unaware of hygienic procedures for military life. Cripes, what a maroon.

“Kids quickly learn to either dominate or stay off the radar. Both are highly useful skills when entering the prison yard.”.. There was one other strategy, the one I used successfully my entire life.. live on the edge. Most people of no consequence will stay away from you.. Example.. I worked for Gulf Resources in the 80′s in an isolated camp in the middle of no where.. I got the electrician, who had a plane, to take the door off. I did a skydive at -20 degrees from 5000 feet.. the inconsequential left me alone, the bullies moved to the other side of the hall. Perfect.

I believe that the best way schools prepare children for prison, is through sex education. Do any of you know of the stuff they are teaching kids? Not just homosexuality (in explicit and graphic ways) but, I kid thee not, even “how to eat your partners faeces (a homosexual thing) without contracting disease!” There were a few murmurs from a few parents over the latter one, whether or not it was withdrawn, I don’t know. I logged onto Lifesite (a catholic blog dedicated to revealing how children are being abused in the education system, abortion and a few other things, which is where I found the article.I’m not catholic, it is open to all.)
To stuff a child full of perversion and add a mix of aetheism is the catalyst for disaster-yet millions of children world-wide have this concoction in them.
They are taught things so bad in sex ed. that I could not mention them all.
That, and the social engineering (restructuring of history in the books to promote a socialist agenda etc.) have produced warped children who are supposed to run the world next. Children of all ages (they start the perversion classes at age 7) are too ashamed to tell their parents what they learned in class, it is up to the parent to find out.

Dear Ms. Robinson. I live in a small southern city. Two high schools. Up until 1998, the high schools were evenly divided: about 1700 each.

After the 1998 school year, the superintendent and school board showed how burnt up they were about the fact that School 1 passed state academic requirements, while School 2 did not.

The superintendent re-districted 400 of the lowest performing students from School 2 and enrolled them in School 1.

My son was a junior in School 1 the fall this all came to fruition. Massive gang fights, on the buses, in the parking lots, in the halls, in the classroom. To counter this, the principal treated School 1 as a prison, all day, all the time, “lockdown” was in effect.

An actual “metal mesh gate” was installed in the entry to the cafeteria so that students were “locked in” to the cafeteria for their 30 minute lunch. Many students couldn’t stomach this and ate lunch in the restrooms or an empty closet.

Prior to 1998, this school was a laid back public school. It hasn’t been the same since. About 10 years later, the School Board tore down and rebuilt each high school. Did they evently re-district the students? What do you think? School 1 is still a jail.

I hated school. There were lots of times I was just plain bored having to sit back and wait for some dumb question to be answered from the back of the room. I have a couple of friends who are teachers. And yea they love to rub the, “I’m off for the summer..”, in your face. But the thing I just can’t get over is why you’d want to stay cooped up in what amounts to a prison for your entire career? The whole time I was in school I just hated the feeling that I was just another number. I was the ‘stay off the radar type’ by being innocuous but well spoken. Most people my age didn’t know what to make of me so they just left me alone. I quietly go about my business and produce results. Eventually the hangers on would want me to give them answers and help cheat. I’ve gone on to make a career from my own mind, under my own endeavor. The job I make the most money at I totally taught myself. I work on computers and make every effort to keep them running. People pay me well for this knowledge. Too many people just want to be spoonfed a simple life; a cradle to the grave. I forge my own path those that choose to follow will be appreciated in kind.

Great Article! We removed our son in his Senior year of higschool to homeschool him. He was beaten down by the system, had lost all confidence in his own brilliant intelligence and love for learning. For his final essay, I asked him to write a paper describing his educational career. He stated that the public school system, teachers and administrators made the kids feel like criminals by imposing ridiculous rules when all they (the kids) wanted to do was learn. My son who is curious by nature wouldn’t step foot in a school for 3 years afterwards but thankfully, he finally decided to go back to college and work possibly on either a science or a physical education degree.

If junior can’t make it with 12 years of school, then 4 more is an embarrassment. Unless he goes in to change it. School gets in the way of money. Ive seen the most successful who couldn’t read. If someone is going to work a trade like farming, black smith, welder, carpentry or bricklayer what is the point in so much school? Thery could be farming at 15.

The French man of letters Foucet, called schools, prisons, hospitals,the military etc Total Institutions. One of the earmarks is that they’re run more for the staff than the client.
Another hallmark is that they’re mostly products of “reform” (before prisons the choice was Death, mutilation or exile–O.K> whipping posts and pillory for minor offenses). Public School was a Puritan project later adopted by unions to avoid competing with child labor (early reform–children were restricted to the 16 hour day.) The modern Army came from the French Revolution’s Levee En Masse which gave Napoleon a force less likely to desert because they wanted to go home. Hospitals,origenaly run by clergy were reorganized and run by Physicians. you get the drift.

Foucault was a gay Frenchman who thought that all of society was a construction for oppression. He invented his references. He lied. He said that mental illness didn’t exist before the Enlightenment. Get your facts and your spelling right; you don’t need school to be a decent scholar.

Brilliant article. I never thought of this before but clearly it is true. I’ve always known they were essentially useless except as brainwashing institutions. Every succeeding generation comes out a little less educated, a little more brainwashed and a little less socialy adept because of a gradual abatement of discipline. The solution is really to do away with ALL public education altogether. But first we MUST get the federal government out of it. Then the state governments. University levels included. Otherwise we will lose our freedom and our republic. We nearly have. And the schools are one of the main factors. They are a testing ground, of sorts. When I was in school they had to get a search warrant, complete with probable cause, to drug test a kid or search his/her person. But no more. Then they could strip search kids at will. Now: we’re all subject to drug tests if we want to work and to strip searches if we want to fly. I predicted all this and got laughed at. So here’s another prediction (laugh all you want): the finger probe is coming next. Feel safe yet?

Good article. School was absolute hell for me and unfortunately I had parents who supported this whole system. I don’t have kids and I don’t know if I ever will, but I’m very concerned to bring up kids in any of our Western fascist countries. In most parts of Asia people have much more freedom, so I am thinking of moving to Asia. In my Western fascist country, the evil gov’t would probably take my kids away if I refused to give it to their prison school. Of course the best thing would be to overthrow the evil gov’t, but not enough people have woken up yet. I know, the revolution is only a matter of time, but what am I gonna do? Wait, wait, wait? No point starting a revolution until you have heaps of people supporting it. It seems, the tax-slave-sheep need to suffer even more tyranny before they wake up.

Taking a shower with 25 people was horrifying. If you aren’t hung or have no pubic hair you are ridiculed. How hard would it be to have shower stalls? Today a lot of girls shave. If a girl decideds not to shave off her pubic hair she would be looked at like a freak. So the herd mentality.

In Eastern Europe at the bus stations you have a drain and holes. You have people walking by and you have to squat over the hole no stalls or seat just a hole. You squat like a dog. Then someone comes along with a hose and washes it down the hole. Seems to me a toilet would save embarrassment and might put the poop washer out of a job. I think that is left over from the Communism days to degrade you.

In school you learn quickly you better have friends or be strong. I know many could have been moved up, but to leave your peers would be like leaving your family. That’s why people should home school your kids and make it easier. Home schooling was so easy. Imagine being with your kids all day and be able to go places while others have to stay in school. If you get in trouble in school. You can be kicked out and some wish it would happen.

I believe school the first grade shapes a child. First grade I walked into school and the whole class was seated. I was scared. I learned to read very well by the first grade. I did very good in second grade. The third grade they bussed us to a black school. That whole year was fighting everytime I went to the bathroom. During luynch it was me like in a jungle being pursued by the black kids. Yhe ones that fought them back you can’t just fight them you must win. I won half the time. So was constantly fighting. Then school wasn’t much fun. Fourth grade the black kids came to our school and we could tell the teacher was afraid of the kids. They would just let the black kids do what they wanted. I had had enough of school.

I scanned the above, but didn’t see this quote – may have been Ivan Illich …

“School is the only place other than prison where time is more important than the job at hand.”

I’ve been a teacher for over 30 years – trying to do the job at hand was so appreciated by my adult ed students that it caused me problems with both other teachers and the administration because of my large classes. It’s all so sad to see that most students wish fervently to really learn, and are instead taught that no one really seems to want to bother to really teach them, but instead blame them for not “learning.”

The original, consciously intended plan for which public education was developed was the dumbing-down of the common people, so they would have less chance of competing against the children of the elite. See:

You haven’t even gotten into the college industrial complex or diploma mills , the folkes getting out of their 4 year programs there (another form of incarceration if you ask me) seem to be carbon copies of each other when they are finally released and seem to parrot all the same identical rubbish and viewpoints, even having personalities that are similar, I guess that has to do with the politically correct brainwashing they’ve just been subject to, but are unaware of.

Oh yes….those 70′s! Shop and small engine repair class. Field hockey and gymnastics. Suspended if you acted up…..mm mm now they just put kids in special school because teachers are not allowed to discipline and of course if teachers criticize the kids for their bad behavior they get sued. Today’s school environment is unbelievable. I know students in HS that read at a preschool level!!! I knew special needs children in school in the 70′s who were smarter than some of these “regular” kids today! PATHETIC!

I can’t think of anything to add other than great article and thanks for writing it.

I was “lucky” in the sense that when I served my sentence you could drop out at 16. The state has changed it now to where you have to be 18. They don’t care if you graduate, just so long as you get them the state funding for 13 years.